The infrastructure set up by the National Security Agency,
however, may only be good for gathering information on the
stupidest, lowest-ranking of terrorists. The Prism surveillance
program focuses on access to the servers of America’s largest
Internet companies, which support such popular services as Skype,
Gmail and iCloud. These are not the services that truly dangerous
elements typically use.

A few weeks ago, National Security Agency whistleblower Edward
Snowden leaked documents diagramming
the existence of a program called PRISM.

Supposedly this program enabled the NSA to tap into the content
of communications from the major tech giants — but only specific
information and only if they had a court order, NSA officials
later claimed.

Later, when Congress pressed for information and justification
for such a program, NSA director Keith
Alexanderclaimed
they had stopped 50 terrorist acts, 10 of which were aimed at
the U.S. Former vice president Dick Cheney
raised the stakes, asserting PRISM could have stopped 9/11.

Dubious claims at best.

There are multiple platforms
and methods to avoid the higher, more visible side of the
Internet. Even Bin Laden was smart enough to use a courier and
hand written notes to give orders.

The real terrorist planners prefer to "remain in the
undernet," writes Bershidsky.

In 2012, a French court found nuclear physicist Adlene
Hicheur guilty of, among other things, conspiring to commit an
act of terror for distributing and using software called Asrar
al-Mujahideen, or Mujahideen Secrets. The program employed
various cutting-edge encryption methods, including variable
stealth ciphers and RSA 2,048-bit keys.

A mathmetician
found out when he hacked into Google last year that they were
only using 512 bit keys for their email communications. Likely
they've upgraded, but the anecdote goes to show just how
sophisticated terrorist planners can get.

Earlier this year we covered
an element of the undernet called "Tor." Certainly the
paranoid upper echelons of Al Qaeda would use this side-road
rather than the general Internet super highway.